Secret to surviving 51 years of marriage (despite everything!)
Affairs. Cancer. Prison. In a riotously candid interview, Jeffrey Archer reveals the...
JEFFREY ARCHER, 77, is telling me he adores strong women. We go through the obvious contenders — Margaret Thatcher (who made him Tory Party deputy chairman in the mid-eighties), Angela Merkel (‘the greatest leader in europe’) and acting dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.
And Princess Anne, of course. ‘ She would have made a good Queen; she’s a class act.’
In fact, Jeffrey played a part in the reform of rules governing succession to the throne, as he reminds me modestly. ‘I brought in the Primogeniture Bill 20 years ago, way ahead of anyone, let alone the Labour Party. Now it has finally gone through, it means that if Kate and William have a son now, he will be in line behind a girl for the first time ever.’
But it is Mary Archer, his wife of 51 years, who dominates his conversation this afternoon. ‘I like clever women, I enjoy the challenge of their brains. Mary has ruined it, in a way. I like darkhaired, dark-eyed, very clever women,’ he hoots. ‘Which does rather limit me.’
Mary is nowhere to be seen today — she has a new four-day post as chair of London’s Science Museum, at the age of 72. So Jeffrey is aided by his devoted PA Alison, who makes me coffee and generally acts as his honorary wife.
Jeffrey sits upright in his favourite armchair and barks instructions. We meet at his penthouse apartment on the Thames, which has an amazing 360-degree view of the city.
I’m here to talk about his new book of short stories, Tell Tale, which is bound to be a bestseller, but ‘ I’m going through a very strange stage’, he confides. ‘Since Mary got the new job, I’m getting lonely. She’s working so hard I actually complained last week about how little I see her. And the children have been complaining as well. The children are 45 and 43!’
THERE is something rather glorious — and, let’s admit it, unusual — about a woman soaring in her career as her menfolk implore her to take it easier.
But then the Archers’ rather unconventional marriage has long fascinated observers. It has withstood his affairs, a libel trial, a four-year prison sentence and political disgrace, so there has been much for Mary to contend with. No wonder he appreciates female strength of character — less forgiving women might have left long ago.
‘We are all human,’ Mary has said in the past, ‘ and Jeffrey somehow manages to be more human than most.’ In an interview in 2015, she insisted that ‘loyalty is a broader concept than strict fidelity’.
Whatever makes them tick, they are still very much together, supporting each other’s projects. They have two grandsons and a new granddaughter — and they have both overcome major illness. Mary had bladder cancer in 2011, while Jeffrey developed prostate cancer in 2013 and has since bravely talked about being rendered impotent by the surgery.
Mary’s illness floored him, he admits. ‘I’ve told her she’s not allowed to die!’
It is clear he is endlessly proud about her new job. In 2013, after she left her post as director and chairwoman of the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust ( which runs Addenbrooke’s Hospital), and having been made a Dame the year before, she briefly considered retirement.
‘I think Mary thought: “It’s all over, the Queen’s made me a Dame.” But I was like: “No, no, no. Get up. Get on with it, woman.” I got her to turn down a lot of things: “It’s not right for you, it’s not you.”
‘And then three jobs came up in a month and she prayed the other two wouldn’t ask her before the Science Museum, because it was the one she wanted with all her heart. She has been a scientist all her life.’
for years you sense their marriage was All About Jeffrey — his political career (he spent five years as an MP and 25 years in the House of Lords), his novels (330 million copies sold).
It’s a shock to realise she is the first ever female chair of a national museum. He jokes that he’s more likely to be sitting at home waiting for his famous wife to come home for supper. Or waiting to accompany her when she is guest of honour at glittering events: ‘She gets invited to everything.’ At dinners she gets to chat up Prince Charles and the Governor of the Bank of england, while he gets the wives. ‘In the car on the way back, she says: “Well, the situation on Brexit for the euro against the pound is…” And I say,’ he continues in only a slightly resigned tone: ‘ “Well, I know where they’re going on holiday.” ’
Not that Mary has ever been domesticated. ‘I was having dinner the other day and someone asked me: “If Mary died, would you marry again, Jeffrey?” There was a question going round the table. And I said: “No, I’d get a cook,” ’ he deadpans. ‘She’s truly amazing but she can’t cook.’
He was always determined that
Mary would never be a politician’s trophy wife.
They met in 1963, at a party at Oxford when Jeffrey, 23, was doing a teacher training course and Mary, 19, was a chemistry student. They married three years later and had two sons, James and William.
He won his first seat as a Tory MP in 1969 and went on to become deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, with Margaret Thatcher as his mentor.
Margaret was an ally in protecting Mary’s career, he reveals today.
‘When I applied for my seat at Louth I was only 29 and Margaret Thatcher was Shadow Secretary of Education, and I didn’t know her.
‘I went to see her and said: “I’ve got a problem. When they say to me: ‘Will Mary be available for opening village fetes and joining the WI’, the honest answer is ‘ No’. She’s just completed her PhD, is a junior fellow at Somerville College and it’s not going to stop.”
‘“Right,” said Margaret, and she wrote out a sentence for me. “Just tell them that,” he recalls. ‘ And then she said: “If they say anything, just tell them where you got it from.” So I went up to Louth and Mrs Bloggs, aged 60, running the constituency, said to me: “We hope Mary Archer will be available for opening flower shows and doing coffee mornings.”
‘And I replied: “No she won’t. The Shadow Secretary of Education feels it would be disgraceful to have spent that amount of the nation’s money educating her to get a double first and a PhD only to open a flower show.”
‘ “Yes, quite right,” they said. And then they went all round the constituency boasting she had a double first,’ he laughs.
There’s no doubt he has been a cheerleader for his wife’s career. ‘ I’ve often pushed her into going for things,’ he continues, ‘ as women have a tendency to stand at the back.’
I doubt he is really lonely, though. He is, after all, terrifyingly well- connected. Once a year he helps organise a Chariots Of Fire race at Addenbrooke’s (‘ which I invented and Mary has made sure works’) to raise funds for the hospital.
Mary’s six- strong team is called The Dames. ‘ You’ve got to be a Dame. And we give the Dames dinner the night before. Ohhhh,’ he sighs. ‘ Six of them in one room. You’d better be awake and you’d better be alive. Because if one hasn’t spat you out, the next one will. I really do take them on, and they just…’ he delicately mimes being spat out.
We talk about the current divorce rate. Women don’t have to stay trapped in bad relationships any longer, we agree. Does he think long marriages are over? ‘I think they marry much later. Both my sons married nearly aged 40, so I think there’s a change. But if you marry as we did aged 21 and 26, the odds are not good.
‘But I’d have left Mary if she’d begun to bore me,’ he adds brightly. ‘And she’d have left me if I’d begun to bore her. She’s one of the most exciting women I’ve met in my life, and she continues to be so.
‘But if I was bored with her and thought: “Oh God, is she coming home, do I have to sit through dinner with her?…” then I’d get rid of her. But it never arises.’
I gulp visibly. But he reassures me that older women hold all the cards. ‘ There’s a new group now that are having the time of their lives. Mary is 72 and bouncing around the Science Museum. She looks 45, so no one notices. When I was a child, 72 would have been an old lady.’
I say that I think the great gift to feminism is hair dye — now, no one knows how old we are. ‘Mary’s hair is jet black,’ he says loyally. ‘She would never allow it to go grey.’
But it’s true Jeffrey has an understanding of failure and human weakness. He nearly went bankrupt in 1974 when he made an investment in a fraudulent scheme. In the end he was forced to stand down as an MP in the 1974 General Election.
Much later, the Press had a field day when they discovered he’d had a three-year affair with actress Sally Farmiloe from 1996, while his former personal assistant Andrina Colquhoun was revealed as his long-term mistress in the Nineties.
The worst reversal came in 2001 when he was jailed for lying in court about his dealings with prostitute Monica Coghlan (he claimed he paid her £2,000 to leave the country as an act of charity).
Mary stood by him. ‘ Lots of things go on in marriages that are less than ideal,’ she later observed dryly.
It has certainly given him rich material. After leaving Hollesley Bay Prison in Suffolk in 2003, he wrote his bestselling Prison Diaries.
He still gets up at 6am to handwrite his stories, endlessly reworking drafts. When he started as an author, Mary was his only editor. ‘ And now she’s my last. She gets it just before it goes off to the printer.’
He seems sanguine about her new fame. ‘I’ve never felt threatened by Mary. I can never understand a man being threatened by either the beauty or the cleverness of a woman. He should revel in it. I love when we go somewhere and everyone wants to talk to Mary.’
He marvels at her work stamina. ‘Frightening. Those men on her board don’t have a hope.’
Yet he can’t help telling me he still pays all the bills. ‘It’s only money,’ he says breezily. Mary’s Museum job is unsalaried.
Would he have coped if she had ever earned more than him? It’s the only time he falters all afternoon. ‘I don’t think I could,’ he pauses elegantly. ‘ I don’t mind her being right up there as a superstar, but if she was paying the bills as well, no, I don’t think I could handle that.’
TELL Tale, Jeffrey Archer’s new short story collection, (£12.99, Pan Macmillan) is out now.